Base

Knowledge base template for Jekyll. Browse through a live demo.

Base template screenshot

Base was made by CloudCannon, the Cloud CMS for Jekyll.

Find more templates, themes and step-by-step Jekyll tutorials at CloudCannon Academy.

Features

  • Tutorials organised by category
  • Two types of tutorials - text and video
  • Ability to have a "tutorial series"
  • FAQ section
  • Disqus comments
  • Sticky sidebar for main headings in tutorials
  • Optimised for editing in CloudCannon
  • RSS/Atom feed
  • SEO tags
  • Google Analytics

Setup

  1. Add your site and author details in _config.yml.
  2. Add your Google Analytics, Disqus and MailChimp keys to _config.yml.
  3. Get a workflow going to see your site's output (with CloudCannon or Jekyll locally).

Develop

Base was built with Jekyll version 3.4.3, but should support newer versions as well.

Install the dependencies with Bundler:

$ bundle install

Run jekyll commands through Bundler to ensure you're using the right versions:

$ bundle exec jekyll serve

Editing

Base is already optimised for adding, updating and removing tutorials, navigation, footer and FAQ information in CloudCannon.

The sticky sidebar in tutorials in populated by pulling out <h2> elements from the content.

Posts

  • Add, update or remove a post in the Posts collection.
  • The tutorials page is organised by categories.
  • Change the defaults when new posts are created in _posts/_defaults.md.

Post Series

To create a new series:

  • Add a new document to the sets collection.
  • Set the title and description.

To add a tutorial/post to a series:

  • Add a set field to the tutorial front matter which points to the file name of the desired set without the .md extention. e.g. If I have a set at _sets/getting-started.md I would use this in my tutorial front matter: set: getting-started.
  • Add a set_order field to the tutorial front matter and specify a number. This is the tutorials order in the set.

Navigation

  • Exposed as a data file to give clients better access.
  • Set in the Data / Navigation section.

Footer

  • Exposed as a data file to give clients better access.
  • Set in the Data / Footer section.